PSY3120 History and Systems of Psychology

Units :

1

Faculty or Section :

Faculty of Sciences

School or Department :

Psychology

Version produced :

21 July 2014

Requisites

Pre-requisite: PSY1010 and PSY1020

Synopsis

This course focuses on the development of scientific thought from the Greek philosophers through to the end of the 19th Century when Psychology formally emerged as a separate discipline with its own subject matter and accepted methodologies. The course will engage with key debates within psychology and consider postmodernism and other recent challenges to science and the logical positivist tradition in Western psychology. In tracing this historical development, the course emphasises the role played by key individuals in the introduction of new ideas and methods. It also draws attention to the often unrecognized influence of geographical and sociopolitical contexts on what are considered to be acceptable accounts of psychological functioning. Students approaching the end of their undergraduate course in Psychology will be surprised to see very early versions of what are now influential and empirically supported psychological theories, and be able to consider the importance of socio-historical locations of knowledge in the shaping of our psychological understandings of phenomena.